Do you feel bad? You should! If you don’t feel bad, you’re a terrible person.So Omaha World Herald cartoonist Jeff Koterba has put out the usual, yearly cartoonist call this season to remember the less fortunate.

So if you would all like to take a moment to bow your heads on Black Friday while you’re sitting in your comfortable chair with your laptop open and refreshing madly to get that awesome, kickass deal on a Samsung television, that’d be great.

The problem is particularly severe in California, which has one-eighth of the U.S. population but accounts for more than one-fifth of the homeless children with a tally of nearly 527,000…Child homelessness increased by 8 percent nationally from 2012 to 2013, according to the report, which warned of potentially devastating effects on children’s educational, emotional and social development, as well as on their parents’ health, employment prospects and parenting abilities.

Enforcement activity declined in every ICE field office from 2011 to 2013, with the biggest declines in the Atlanta, Salt Lake City, Washington DC/Virginia, and Houston field offices.
Criminal alien arrests declined by 11 percent from 2012 to 2013, despite the completion of the Secure Communities program, which generates more referrals of arrested aliens than ever before. ICE agents took a pass on hundreds of thousands of aliens who were arrested by local authorities in those years.
ICE is carrying a case load of 1.8 million aliens who are either in removal proceedings or have already been ordered removed. Less than two percent are in detention, which is the only proven way to ensure departure.
As of the end of July 2013 there were 872,000 aliens – nearly half of ICE’s total docket – who had been ordered removed but who had not left the country.

Perhaps the reason why we have seen such an uptick in child homelessness is because of the uptick in children from Southern American countries coming into the United States illegally? It’s a stretch of logic, but let’s consider it.

When you have massive numbers of children and teenagers hopping on trains and illegally entering our country, is it really surprising that many of them, upon hopping off that train, won’t have anywhere to live for a while once they arrive here?

If illegal immigration is leading to increased pressure on services for American children, leading to a decreased ability for our social services to provide decent care…maybe we should do something about that.

Perhaps another Operation Wetback would miraculously solve some of the homeless problems facing California. Perhaps we should send the homeless children home, to their countries of origin.

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The current state of American economic affairs is unsustainable, but that’s not what Hillary, Obama, or any of the Republican candidates will tell you. Obama promised jobs. Hillary promised jobs. Romney promised jobs.

They had no intention of fulfilling these promises because that’s not important to them. They are the ruling class and their goals are not yours. They are like every other politician that gives you promises on how they will protect you and make your life better.

Politicians who say they will bring jobs back to the United States are lying to you unless they tell you exactly how they will do it. They will insist that more jobs are on the way. They will insist that these are not McJobs.

It’s possible. Unfortunately there is only one way to do it and it will make some very rich people very mad.

Anti-international free trade, but only within the United States and United States territories. Any other foreign entity, if it decides it would like to participate in our market, must pay a tariff. That tariff will be set to a level where it makes much, much more sense to bring manufacturing back to the United States.

This will not be popular with the ruling class. Tariffs reduce the ability of international corporations to shuttle cheap goods made with near-slave labor into societies that are forced to give workers rights and treat them like humans. This reduces profits considerably, and may threaten the ruling class with their shareholders giving them das boot out of their comfortable positions.

The alternative, in my simple eyes, is to allow things to go the way they are going. The rich will continue to get richer. The poor will not get ahead, but will be entertained and fed. The middle class will either slip into the ruling class by superior skill, intelligence or luck – or they will stagnate and fall into the poor class.

It will go that way for a while. And then, when everything is rolling at a nice boil and you have very large numbers of people who look over at their neighbors a few miles away and notice all the nice stuff they have….someone will kick the kettle over.

Then there will be blood in the streets, as people are dragged from their homes in an orgy of violence and destruction that will make the LA Riots pale in comparison.

Bowe Bergdahl had a variety of interests before joining the U.S. Army. Mr. Bergdahl tried out fencing and martial arts for a while before trying out ballet classes at the Sun Valley Ballet School in Ketchum, Idaho. He never owned a car, he just rode a bicycle wherever he had to go.

Interestingly, Mr. Bergdahl, who seems to have had quite an identity crisis growing up in Idaho, spent time in a Buddhist monastery between 2007 and 2008.

Somehow, he got it in his head to join the military. Showing a bit of trepidation about what he might actually be doing “over there,” Bowe Bergdahl told a friend:

If this deployment is lame, I’m just going to walk off into the mountains of Pakistan.

Well ok then.

While stationed in Afghanistan, P1C Bergdahl was viewed as a strange guy, a loner who wouldn’t really talk or hang out with the other men in his unit. Instead, he stayed in his bunk, learning Pashto and Arabic with Rosetta Stone.

On June 27, 2009, P1C. Bowe Bergdahl sent a final e-mail to his parents. It read, in part:

The future is too good to waste on lies. And life is way too short to care for the damnation of others, as well as to spend it helping fools with their ideas that are wrong. I have seen their ideas and I am ashamed to even be american. The horror of the self-righteous arrogance that they thrive in. It is all revolting.

In the US army you are cut down for being honest… but if you are a conceited brown nosing shit bag you will be allowed to do what ever you want, and you will be handed your higher rank… The system is wrong. I am ashamed to be an american. And the title of US soldier is just the lie of fools…I am sorry for everything here. These people need help, yet what they get is the most conceited country in the world telling them that they are nothing and that they are stupid, that they have no idea how to live. We don’t even care when we hear each other talk about running their children down in the dirt streets with our armored trucks… We make fun of them in front of their faces, and laugh at them for not understanding we are insulting them…I am sorry for everything. The horror that is america is disgusting…There are a few more boxes coming to you guys. Feel free to open them, and use them.

With that, P1C Bowe Bergdahl left his equipment on his bunk and walked off into the Afghanistan countryside with a compass, a knife, some water, a camera and a diary. He had mailed his other stuff to his parents a few weeks prior, including an Apple laptop.

In hindsight, his fellow soldiers said it was obvious that Bowe Bergdahl was planning on leaving. At the time, they treated the situation like he’d been captured. Rescue units were scrambled and between 6-8 lives were lost in the search for Mr. Bergdahl, who, it would turn out, the Army investigation decided had deserted.

Former Army Sgt. Evan Buetow, the team leader the night of Bergdahl’s disappearance, told news reporters that the Army intercepted radio and cellphone conversations from a nearby village that described an American soldier who wanted to talk to the Taliban.

According to another soldier who was at the base at the time:

We had all known that he had deserted his post and there was never anything about him getting captured or a POW until a little while later when it came down from the chain-of-command that we needed to keep quiet about it, not say anything and that we’re going with the narrative that he’s captured.

Whenever he went and walked off the base, only stuff that we know, that we trained for, that the sports that we know on vehicles, how are moves are, stuff like that, they were getting hit very precisely. And the ambushes we used, the certain tactics that we used, the Taliban was picking up on those things and the Haqqani network started using the same things as well. So they were very precise and very accurate. You could tell it was somebody on the inside that had that info.

Bowe Bergdahl was promoted to sergeant on the 17th of June, 2011.

On the 31st of May, 2014, Bergdahl was released by his captors and recovered by U.S. special operations forces in eastern Afghanistan. The release was brokered by the American, Qatar, and Afghanistan governments with the Taliban, in exchange for five Guantanamo Bay detainees transferred to Qatari custody for at least one year.

Nebraska’s own Chuck Hagel, who will support whoever is paying him at the time, has announced that he thinks leaping to conclusions about Bowe’s behavior isn’t fair. Just because it looks like Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was a traitor who, it seemed, was trying to join up with a bunch of primitive sheep and boy lovers, we shouldn’t leap to conclusions.

We don’t do that in the United States. We rely on facts. I don’t know of any circumstances or details of U.S. soldiers dying as a result of efforts to get Bergdahl.

Five terrorists released back into the wild. 1 terrorist brought back home. Several soldiers dead in the search for what appears to be a traitor.

Because the Army never filled out paperwork to classify Bowe Bergdahl as a deserter, he will receive back pay and benefits. The Army will undoubtedly give Sgt. Bergdahl about 5 years worth of back pay. It should be a nice check. Maybe now he can get a nicer bicycle.

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Latasha works at Wal-Mart, a company that is famous for the quality of the Chinese merchandise they stock on their shelves and the dedication they have towards their employees’ well-being.

On the 29th of January, 2014, Latasha Wilson took a long, unauthorized break from work.

During this 3-hour break, which she spent in the restroom of the Wal-Mart, Latasha gave birth to a baby boy.

The little boy was born alive, but did not stay that way. The baby was left in the Wal-Mart toilet for a bit too long, breathed toilet water into its lungs and drowned.

Her 3-hour break over with, Latasha Wilson wrapped her baby in some paper towels, left the restroom and put the package into her work locker.

Later, Latasha and her baby’s daddy, 20-year-old Zakary Carter, decided that the right thing to do would be to take the now-corpse of this baby, dump it in a cave (there are lots of caves in Missouri) and set it on fire.

Latasha Carter has been charged with 2nd-degree murder. Zakary Carter has been charged with tampering with evidence.

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This is Vincent Parker, a 16-year-old 10th grader living with his parents in Norfolk, Virginia.

Vincent was only two years away from joining the rest of society as a full-fledged adult when he ruthlessly beat his parents to death with a baseball bat.

On the 19th of December, 2013, Vincent Parker left school early and surprised his mother with a dose of pepper spray to the face as she was coming out of the bathroom. Once she was blinded, Vincent stabbed his mother in the eye and then proceeded to beat her to death. A fickle child, he alternated between hitting his mother with a crowbar and a metal baseball bat.

According to a medical examination, 57-year-old Carol Parker had about 25 separate stabs and/or impact spots to her head, face and neck. Although the face is part of the head, so maybe just to the head and neck. And necks are hard to differentiate from heads sometimes, so maybe just to the head.

Anyway, he beat his mother to death.

When Vincent’s father, 55-year-old Wayne Parker, returned home from work, Vincent attacked his father as well. There was some stabbing, some beating, and in the end, after 911 was called and Wayne was transported to the hospital, where he later died.

The police questioned Vincent, who originally said that his father was the one who assaulted the rest of the family. The lies didn’t hold up, however, and Vincent eventually confessed.

Vincent Parker decided to go with a “guilty” plea to his dual charges of second degree murder.

His reasoning behind the brutal assaults and murders?

‘I just remember getting mad,’ Parker told the court. ‘It’s all from my dad. All this stuff like my dad taking away my iPod and stuff.’

He was charged as an adult and will be sentenced in September.

The District Attorney is asking that at least part of Vincent’s sentence be served at a juvenile facility.

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On December 30th, 2007, 24-year-old Michael Gagnon, a construction worker, almost single-handedly wiped out a family heading home to their residence in Maryland after spending Christmas with family and friends in Michigan.

After drinking himself into a stuporous 0.254 blood alcohol level, Michael Gagnon left the party at the Rodeo Bar and Grill, for no good reason.

His family had three rooms rented at the Holiday Inn that the Rodeo Bar and Grill shares a parking lot with, and he could have stayed there quite easily.

But Michael Gagnon really wanted some Taco Bell.

So, despite the fact that there were designated drivers at the party, such as his pregnant sister, he left the party to go and get it, hopping into his brother’s black 2005 Ford F350 pickup truck that they used for construction work and heading on down the road to the nearest Taco Bell.

You have to be pretty drunk when people working at Taco Bell notice that you’re too plastered to drive, but that’s exactly what happened as Michael Gagnon drove through the drive-through.

What would have been an easy drive for a sober man was made extraordinarily complicated by Michael Gagnon’s drunkenness.

Only Michael Gagnon knows what was going through Michael Gagnon’s head at the time, but he missed the turnoff for the interstate to head back to the party and continued along until he saw, swerved towards and drove onto the wrong on-ramp – a maneuver that makes perfect sense when you’re sitting at a blood alcohol level three times the legal limit.

He might even have gotten away with the maneuver if the on-ramp that he drove onto wasn’t, in fact, an off-ramp.

Michael Gagnon drove about four miles down the wrong way on the highway before he smashed into the 1999 Chevrolet Astro minivan that 36-year-old Daniel G. Griffin Jr. was driving his family home in.

Eyewitness accounts say that both drivers tried to avoid a head-on collision, but that the passenger door was basically ripped off it’s hinges as the full-size Ford pickup truck ran into the minivan.

As the minivan was ripped open, an assortment of stuffed animals, toys, luggage, gift wrap and baby blankets flew over the highway, along with several of the children who were riding in the minivan.

The injuries were pretty much what you would expect. Broken bones. Massive head trauma. Death.

Less than 10 minutes after Michael Gagnon left his little party, he had managed to kill the voting majority of a large, happy family.

What makes it worse is that when police arrived, Michael Gagnon was belligerent and completely uncooperative, fighting with the paramedics who were trying to treat him and screaming at the firemen who pulled him out of his brother’s truck.

The only remotely positive bit of information I can find about this incident is that it happened at a time of night when most of the kids would have been asleep.

Who did Michael Gagnon murder?

Well, mom Bethany Griffin died. She was 36. Her MySpace page can be found here. 10-year-old Jordan Griffin died too, along with 8-week-old Vadie Griffin. 10-year-old Haley Burkman and 7-year-old Lacie Burkman, Danny Griffin Jr’s stepdaughters, were also killed.

If you’ll take a look at this story here, Jeanette Hawes in Augusta, Georgia tells the press that her neighbor didn’t have to stab her brother’s dog.

She didn’t have to go that far. She could’ve ran and called police, got help, or whatever.

I certainly agree, Jeanette Hawes.

(For posterity’s sake, and just in case the story gets lost or misplaced somehow, we’re going to copy and paste the story containing the mention of Jeanette Hawes – please forgive us, it’ll make sense later)

13-year-old Elijah Hawes was playing with his pit bull Saturday night around 9:00 at his home on Bransford Road. The dog was on a chain in the front yard when the suspect, Ginger Arthurs, was walking by with her chow mix.

“The suspect in this case was walking her dog and at some point her dog broke free and charged the dog that was on the chain, those two dogs started to fight,” Lt. Scott Peebles said.

Both owners tried to pull their dogs away from each other. Investigators said the suspect, Ginger Arthurs then pulled out a pocket knife and stabbed the pit bull a number of times.

“I was just like ‘whatcha stabbing my dog for?’ and my god brother was trying to pull him away from her,” Elijah Hawes said.

Elijah said he was shocked.

“My dog was so hurt he just let loose to the other dog and ran in the yard and died,” Hawes said.

This incident report said Arthurs took her chow dog and ran to her apartment, where she was later taken into custody, and charged with cruelty to animals.

“She didn’t have to go that far. She could’ve ran and called police, got help, or whatever,” Jeanette Hawes said.

Jeanette Hawes said her brother was devastated.

“To actually hear my brother talk about what happened to his dog and it happened right here in front of him,” Hawes said.

Elijah said he hated to see his dog die like that.

“I just can’t see how a person can stab a dog to death. Like she wanted him to die because she kept stabbing him,” Hawes said.

Ok, so stabbing a dog is bad. I get it.

After a fight with her boyfriend on the 29th of November, 2007, Jeanette Hawes took her children – one-year-old Jordon Hawes and three-year-old Shakayla Hawes – with her to a gas station she frequently visited.

She took both children with her into the bathroom, closed and locked the door.

Once the door was locked, Jeanette Hawes pulled out a steak knife and repeatedly stabbed her two children in the chest.

Then she laid down in their pooling blood and waited.

Jordon Hawes died by his mother’s hands on the floor of a gas station bathroom. Shakayla lived a bit longer, but died on the way to the hospital.

According to witnesses, Jeanette didn’t seem bothered by the fact that she’d just wiped out her family.

We seen them take one of the children out covered in a bag… the mother didn’t have any remorse. She wasn’t crying, nothing.

Jeanette Hawes has been charged with two counts of murder and with possession of a knife during the commission of a crime.

Now, answer this, Miss Jeanette Hawes: If it’s not right to stab a dog to death, why is it ok to stab your two children to death?

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Future holiday get-togethers are going to be a little awkward for this family.

27-year-old Joseph Miller and 24-year-old Nikki Reed lived with their five boys, all of whom were younger than five years of age.

Well, that was what they reported to the State Department of Human Services, at least.

Relatives of the family hadn’t seen the youngest, one-year-old Deuntay Miller, for a while.

Two years, in fact.

They were beginning to wonder if the little guy was dead. While Miller and Reed told family members that the boy was being taken care of by relatives, Tammy Johnson, Joseph Miller’s sister, told relatives:

I’m getting the feeling that the baby is not alive.

While nobody had seen Deuntay Miller, Nickella Reid had been collecting her $822 welfare check and food stamps for five kids every month.

I’m sure it was well-spent.

Strangely, a baby that had apparently disappeared isn’t what brought the authorities to the door of the Miller/Reed residence.

What brought the investigators around was a report of a child that had been burned over a third of his body by hot water in the Miller/Reid kitchen.

It didn’t take long before Nickella told the officers that the scalding was Joseph Miller’s fault.

While the police were taking that down, Nickella Reid told them about the death of her son two years ago.

Nickella Reid, a virtual cornucopia of knowledge, also told the investigators that they could find the baby’s remains in Tammy Johnson’s house, specifically in the ceiling of Tammy Johnson’s basement, about five miles from Joseph Miller and Nikki Reed’s home.

According to police reports Nickella told the authorities that Joseph Miller attempted to dispose of the baby’s remains by setting them on fire on a barbecue grill, in an attempt to avoid cremation costs.

At some point, probably while coming over to his sister’s house to do laundry, Joseph Miller hid Deuntay’s charred body in the ceiling.

Nobody is quite sure exactly how long the baby had been in Tammy Johnson’s ceiling. I’m sure more information will reveal itself. After all, it’s not every day that parents either kill their children or let them die, slap them on the grill for a while and then try to hide the remains.

The other Miller/Reid kids are going to need therapy for a long time. I’m sure it’s hard for a five-year-old to understand why mommy and daddy killed and hid your baby brother in your aunt’s house, you know?

Nickella Reid and Joseph Miller were arraigned on the 24th of November, 2007, on charges of first and second-degree child abuse.

Once the baby’s remains are examined and a cause of death is confirmed, it is possible they will both be facing murder charges.

Tammy Johnson, in an interview with the local news, told reporters:

It’s my brother and I love him, but I’m trying to figure out what happened, what happened to your mind? What state of mind were you in to do this to your child?

That’s pretty much the question everyone asks when they hear these kinds of things happening.

When asked by local reporters, a neighbor thought that she looked depressed.

During the weekend I did see her up on the ledge there, and she was just smoking a cigarette and she looked kind of depressed. I didn’t think much of it. It’s just the way she looks.

Yara Perez lived in an apartment with her two daughters, three-year-old Jacqueline Gonzalez and five-year-old Yara.

Also living in the apartment and rounding out this modern-day Brady Bunch was Francisco Castaneda, Yara Perez’s common-law husband and the love of her life, according to Yara’s MySpace page.

Both Yara Perez and Francisco Castaneda have a history of incidents with family members.

In March of 2004, day-care personnel caring for Yara’s older daughter reported a burn to the girl’s chest. Yara claimed that some hot milk right out of the microwave had spilled onto her daughter and, after an investigation, the burn was ruled accidental.

In October of 2007, Yara was charged with two counts of assault with intent to cause bodily injury. She had bonded out and was waiting to be arraigned in December.

Francisco Castaneda was accused in December of 2005 of beating the crap out of his then common-law wife, punching her repeatedly in the face before police arrived and found her locked in a back bathroom, topless and covered in bruises and cuts.

And, of course, those are only the incidents that were reported to the police.

Another incident was reported to the police on the 19th of November, 2007.

This time, an anonymous call was made to 911. A female caller told the operator that she had seen three-year-old Jacqueline Gonzalez lying on the floor of her parent’s apartment, face up and motionless. She also mentioned that Yara Perez and Francisco Castaneda told her that the child had fallen, but that she was ok.

Hmm.

When the police arrived, Yara and Francisco insisted that they didn’t have a three-year-old, presenting Yara’s five-year-old and telling officers that she was an only child.

Ironically, that was now a partial truth.

Officers went through the apartment, which had a room that was obviously set up for two younger children. Finding no child in the apartment, they moved the search outside the apartment, walking the apartment complex grounds.

Finally the officers checked the family’s gold-colored Dodge Stratus, which was parked right in front of the apartment.

In the trunk, placed in a large plastic tub, was the body of Jacqueline Gonzales.

Yara Perez and Francisco Castaneda were immediately arrested.

During their respective interrogations, each of these fine, upstanding citizens first attempted to tell the authorities that the girl had hurt herself falling down. When that didn’t fly, they both attempted to place the blame for the girl’s death on each other.

An autopsy that was done on the 21st of November showed the world that Jacqueline death was caused by at least one incredibly hard blow to her abdomen, which caused the internal bleeding that finally killed the girl. The evidence showed that the blow was not accidental.

Police spokesman Javier Sambrano told the press:

The injuries that that child received, we feel, were as a result of injuries that were caused by the parents. The type of injuries that the child had were not consistent with a fall.

Both Yara Belen Perez and Francisco Castaneda have been charged with injury to a child resulting in death, which is a first-degree felony.

According to correctional officials, Yara Perez has been placed on suicide watch.